After I read the report, I concluded — to my surprise — that there was really not much new in the report. This is not a negative reflection on The Economist. I believe it’s a positive reflection on the efficiency of Twitter to stream the most important news and trends my way before they get summarized by a business periodical.

Nevertheless, there were a few interesting nuggets I wanted to pass along:

>>Follow me on Twitter signs are appearing on the doors and windows of small businesses around the world. Asurvey found that 17 percent of Britain’s small businesses were using Twitter. They saved an average of $8,000 a year by cutting out other forms of advertising.

>> A survey of 1,400 chief information officers conducted last year by Robert Half Technology, a recruitment firm, found that only 10 percent of them gave employees full access to social media networksduring the day, and that many were blocking Facebook and Twitter altogether. The executives’ biggest concern was that social networking would lead to “social not-working.” Some bosses also fretted that the sites would be used to leak sensitive corporate information.

>> An astonishing amount of time is being wasted on investigating the amount of time being wasted on social networks. One study estimated that personal use of social networks during the working day was costing the British economy almost $2.3 billion a year in lost productivity. Another concluded that if companies banned employees from using Facebook while at work, their productivity would improve by 1.5%.

>> The magazine described Facebook’s “hacker culture.” Their head of engineering’s motto is “move fast and break stuff.” What matters is getting fresh products out to users quickly, even if they do not always work as intended. To generate new ideas, they hold all-night hack-a-thons to at which engineers work on their pet projects. This Red Bull culture maybe why Facebook has just one engineer for every 1.2 million users.

>> Survey of 300,000 Twitters users showed more than half tweeted less than once every 74 days and 10 percent of all users account for 90 percent of all tweets.

>> Facebook’s audience is bigger than any TV network that has ever existed on the face of the earth.

>>In Asia several social media companies such as Japan’s GREE, South Korea’s Cyworld and China’s Tencent, are already making healthy profits from sales of games, premium personalization options, virtual goods, and custom backgrounds.

>>Salesforce.com predicts that demand for corporate internal social networking services will riseas managers realize that they now know more about strangers on Twitter and Facebook than they do about the people in their own companies.

>>Intel estimates it has saved millions of dollars a year in fees by recruiting senior managers through LinkedIn rather than using headhunters. US Cellular said it saved more than $1 mm last year by using a LinkedIn system that produced good candidates faster than traditional recruitment channels.

>>Social networks have made the labor market more transparentin another way too. A survey by CareerBuilder.com of 2,700 executives last year found that 45 percent of them looked at job candidates’ social network pages as part of their research, and more than a third of those had unearthed information that put them out of contention. Time to turn up those privacy settings?

Some interesting stuff! Of these facts and trends, which jumps out for you as having an impact on the way you do business?

Illustrations: Part of The Economist report.

This is the third and final (for now) personal case study on how the social web delivers unexpected business benefits. This story features LinkedIn, a powerhouse generator of business connections.

Making connections

I’ve made some of my best business contacts through LinkedIn Group Q&A forums. One example is my relationship with Dr. Ben Hanna, now VP of Dex Interactive. In a casual response to one of my answers in a forum, he mentioned that he was documenting his company’s progress on social media marketing month by month. I thought this was fascinating and asked if I could feature him on {grow}. This led to a number of articles which remain some of the most popular posts I’ve done. Ben and I have continued to support each other on various web-related projects.

Human Resources 2.0

Second example of a business benefit: One of my customers was looking to hire a new technician with highly specialized skills. I suggested doing an advanced search on LinkedIn using the zip code (to narrow the location) and keywords indicating the skill set. He followed my advice, identified three viable candidates and he just hired one of them. I helped my customer with an important personnel issue in one 60-second phone call!

New customers

Another example led to a direct business opportunity. An account executive from GIS Planning read some of my answers on a LinkedIn Group Forum and became curious enough to click my icon, which took her to my website … which took her to my Twitter account … and my blog. Of course I had not connected to her directly at this point but that was about to change.

After a couple of months, she called me up out of the blue: “Mr. Schaefer, I’ve been reading your comments on LinkedIn, Twitter and your blog and I’m convinced you are the voice of marketing we need for or company. Can you take on a new account?”

Well, THAT was a nice surprise!

This led to subsequent phone calls with her executive leadership and it resulted in a business partnership with GIS Planning, an amazing company that produces software for economic development institutions. It pulled me into a whole new industry and allowed me to learn from some wonderful marketing pros. And, it has helped my bottom line, which is what this is all about, right?

So let’s see how this real-world experience relates to my formula for creating business benefits on the social web:

By being active on LinkedIn forums, I was building important new business connections. In the GIS case, I didn’t even realize it.

The content Ben Hanna provided spurred dialogue and cooperation between us. Meaningful content in the form of LinkedIn Group answers provided enough value for GIS to take action to learn more about me. Meaningful content comes in many forms!

When I was participating in the forums, I was genuinely offering help with no intent that I would get anything out of it. Similarly, I enjoy supporting Ben’s projects becuase I always learn something and I truly believe in his vision.

I believe this formula represents the core value of the social web — providing an opportunity to use your life’s blessings to connect to others in a meaningful way. We are living in a historic moment. We are the first generation to have access to free, instantaneous, global communication. If you use this gift well, the benefits can be astounding.

Don’t you agree?

This is the third installment of the unexpected benefits of the social web. You might enjoy these other articles:

A lot of social media content elicits “rants,” “vents” and snark these days. But today I am overwhelmed by the positive feelings flowing from the blogosphere. Let me back up a step.

This has been a difficult couple of weeks. I have been very sick, had a string of daily technology disasters, and the perfect storm of critical customer deadlines. By today I am exhausted.

Then this amazing thing happened. I started getting all of these little “Follow Friday” love notes. About every 10 minutes or so my computer would “ping” with an unsolicited little ‘atta boy. I think maybe 30 or so floated in with very touching and generous sentiments on many of them. How did you know I needed this today?

Did you ever think we could live in a time when you could get 30 love notes from people you’ve never met?

Even more important are the growing friendships I am developing with you. When I see your comments on my blog, tweets or Facebook posts, I get a smile on my face because I think of the special relationships I’m developing with so many people, and it has been so powerful and unexpected.

I have been working with a new regional telecom client and some of the latest industry data are fascinating.

U.S. wireless revenue is up 7.6 percent for the year led by data messaging. It isn’t news that the wireless industry has been growing or that data has been off-setting a slowdown in voice. What is striking is that data’s contribution to growth has been accelerating through the recession, while the voice slowdown has been steepening.

This has surprised some analysts who expected people to tighten their budgets on “discretionary” data services such as text messaging while holding on to a core service such as phone voice services. But the opposite has happened. What’s going on here?

Rapid technological advancements (better devices, applicatiions and networks) are powerful drivers of growth. Growth would be even stronger without the recession.

To some degree, data messaging is substituting for voice services.

Voice markets are maturing.

Alternatives like Skype has some impact on voice

Price competition has been severe for voice while high-end data services are still commanding a premium price.

By the way this is a U.S. trend only. Data show messaging growth much slower in Europe, Latin America and developing countries, while voice is still growing in places such as Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

If you make the leap (and I think you can) that trends in wireless data growth would also correspond to growth in social media usage, this is how the world stacks up, by approximate two-year data usage growth trends:

U.S. 12.7%

Asia-Pacific 10.2%

Latin America 8.2%

Emerging Europe 8.7%

Emerging Asia 7.9%

Developed Europe 5.1%

Why is Europe lagging so significantly in wireless data usage? Wouldn’t you think the same trends would apply? Any opinions?

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Welcome to {grow}

You’re in marketing for one reason: Grow.
Grow your company, reputation, customers, impact, profits. Grow yourself. This is a community that will help. It will stretch your mind, connect you to fascinating people, and provide some fun along the way. I am so glad you’re here.
-Mark Schaefer